Thursday, January 21, 2021
COVID Shortens Life Expectancy Projections?
A few days ago, CNN ran this story: Coronavirus will knock more than a year off average US life expectancy, study finds.
A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences projects that Covid-19 will reduce US life expectancy in 2020 by 1.13 years, with a disproportionate number of deaths occurring among Black and Latino populations. When combined with provisional estimates of US death rates for the first half of the year, the data show a clear rise in the mortality rate as the pandemic took hold of the nation.
The "study used Census Bureau data and data on actual and projected deaths from the pandemic of the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation and the National Center for Health Statistics [as well as] various models and estimates for mortality rates." Based on their findings, the researchers concluded "a reduction in US life expectancy at birth of 1.13 years to 77.48 years."
https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/elder_law/2021/01/covid-shortens-life-expectancy-projections.html